KDE 4.1, which is supposed to become the KDE4 version usable by 'normal' people, is coming at the end of July. When Ars reviewed the beta release, they were positive in that it was moving forward at an "extraordinary pace". Despite the positive notions in the news, many seem to have problems actually seeing all the new stuff being done in KDE4 - just like how people fail to see the massive amount of work put into Vista. KDE developer Rafael Fernandez Lopez (I'm sorry for the lack of diacritical marks, an OSNews bug we're working on) decided to put together a screencast showing off all the new stuff coming in KDE 4.1.

Why cannot either of his comments be moderated. He speaks a lot of truth, and here we go again, we have the Linux brigade (or Linux lovers tm as I call them) who blindly mod down anything that is anti Linux (even if merited). I really wish that the osnews.com moderating facility would be moderated for obvious abuses.

It's funny... looking at my comments history, it would appear quite a number of people have found one comment, buried it and then sought out every other comment with my display pic and just buried it 'just because' I dont think I've ever been buried below 0 before in my time here and yet my last 5 comments are -4 or below.

Sure, I use gnome... and its kinda ok... in the same way that a ford escort is kinda ok. Gnome and KDE dont live nicely together so I try not to install both these days. Want me to pan Gnome just fore the sake of it?

The gnome bar looks like its been cut and shut from win98, texturing it doesnt help, the icons look flat and misaligned both on the bar and on the desktop..

awn and the desktop cube effect in compiz makes a reasonable job of getting rid of the bottom bar but I've never found anything to properly make the main bar looking anything half as nice as os x OR XP OR Vista... the same goes for the bar in KDE, looks fine till you actually start using it.

All I'm saying is... show me what KDE can do to improve my life as a linux user, how does dolphin sort files, what can I do in that I cant already do in nautilus?

You all must think I'm moaning about KDE for the sake of it... or because I'm some kind of Gnome bigot.. I'm not, I'm just sad that it would appear Linux in general has so much potential and yet carries so much clunk.

I'm concerned that the only thing Linux developers are good at (for whatever reason) is reinventing proprietary UI designs.

If anyone has been following my tirade you'll notice I mentioned how Linux looked soooo much better compared to 2k % win 98 -- god it did at the time, even BeOS was better than 98 but it all seems to have went downhill fast since. Now that all the closed source unices have went down the tubes, and/or opened up to the community... where is the multiple innovative desktops of yore?

Has the desktop interface matured that much that there is nothing left to create? Or have the rock solid unix traditions of 20 - 30 years been churned around by the community so much that there is no more creativity to 'steal'? (apples time machine aka rsync or 'spaces' suddenly come to mind in the 'stealing' category)

Compiz and kwin seem to have been the only unified upgrades to linux in years, quasi-transparent terminals were a nice touch 10 years ago but how long did linux take to catch up with os'x transparency?

Gnome and KDE were nice in a time when Microsoft users were stuck in a world full of motif windows.

So from that point of view, KDE has came a long way and I really respect that, but I dont need to see another cube, I dont need to see another widget I dont need to see how leet you programmers are at making linux look like leopard (or better than, in many ways)..

that jimho looks really nice... well apart from the search box and star looking slapped on....

I'll keep wandering till I find something I like, I've been in both kde and gnome camps in my time, I guess both of them will eventually stop sucking at some point. (and no, neither of them suck enough to go back to windows)

I've just yet to see something from either Gnome and / or KDE other than Compiz/Kwin that made me take a step back and go 'woah, I want to use that over x in windows/osx'

.. and I dont think there really is that much subjectivity about it. (unless you have a long grey hair/beard and think anything that requires a mouse is too newfangled)

Good points, sadly, I don't think that many people here are going to care. That's the sad part...

We have the 'how dare you even question us' approach that is so often due to peer pressure. I ain't a lemming, so I say what I believe, I don't like to follow others. Sadly, most of society just simply follows others in order to either look cool, or just be the "norml". People hate to stand out, they hate to be different. They're so afraid of how others will judge them because of it, that they simply elect to be a lemming and conform and not question anything. This is why people just jump on your posts. Plus, many here are illiterate users who simply cannot read and comprehend the moderation rules - READ THEM AGAIN guys! Just because you disagree with someones post does NOT mean you mod them down.

I really wish osnews.com would mod the moderation and punish those who abuse it on a regular basis for their own self gratification of their own personal view of the world.

I like the KDE find look, but agree with you, I did a quick 2 sec ugly hack in Photoshop to remove the star, and round the corners of the search field, which looks a LOT better imho: